Bills lease could let team skip town early, stop me if you’ve heard this before

Buffalo’s Investigative Post has dug into the Bills‘ memorandum of understanding for their yet-to-be-100%-signed-off-on new $1.4 billion stadium, and noted that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s promise that spending $1 billion in public money will at least guarantee the team stays in Buffalo for 30 years is not so much, in fact, entirely true:

The memorandum of understanding between the state, county and team allows for the relocation of the team if the Bills owners pay back the $850 million in public funds spent to construct the stadium, plus any capital improvements, and the cost to demolish it, if the state’s stadium authority so desires. After 15 years, the penalties to relocate start to steadily decrease.

This is something that was noted back when the MOU was first proposed last April, but somehow keeps getting ignored in the media because elected officials keep insisting the MOU doesn’t say what it actually says — funny how that works.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because the Baltimore Ravens just agreed to a similar deal, where the state can seek an injunction against the team moving before the lease term is up, but if it doesn’t get it the team owners can just pay off the remaining stadium debt and then skip town. This is clearly becoming industry standard for NFL leases, where “industry standard” means “all the other kids are getting away with it” — if you want a truly ironclad lease, bar team owners from even negotiating a move with other cities, like St. Petersburg did with the Tampa Bay Rays until it decided to give them a last-second loophole.

This matters for the Bills not just because 15 years is an eternity in sports time, but because the Bills’ owners, local businessfolk Terry and Kim Pegula, aren’t getting any younger: Terry is 71 and, according to the IP, recently made “incoherent” comments to other NFL owners somehow connecting league scouting combine rules with revealing clothing that his tennis-star daughter has to wear; Kim is just 53 but was recently hospitalized for an “unexpected illness” that currently has her AWOL from running the team. And if that’s all a bit circumstantial evidence that the Pegulas may not be long for the ownership world, it’s also a legit reminder that a lot can change in a decade in a half.

All of which seems to foreshadow the Bills’ $1 billion stadium payday just forestalling move talk for a decade or so, after which we’ll again start hearing about how the current stadium is “aging” and the team could leave without a new one, or at least without adding a roof to the old one, or maybe some holographic replay systems. This is how you get a stadium lease that becomes a gift that keeps on giving, which is clearly ideal if you’re a team owner and significantly less so if you’re an elected official — but then, Kathy Hochul almost certainly isn’t going to be New York governor anymore by the year 2038, so that can be somebody else’s problem.

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2 comments on “Bills lease could let team skip town early, stop me if you’ve heard this before

  1. “…And if that’s all a bit circumstantial evidence …. it’s also a legit reminder that a lot can change in a decade in a half…”

    Sure, but – as has been the case with the Raiders, Colts and Chargers – fear not because the succession plan is completely sound and practically guarantees success for decades into the future…

  2. The team becomes more valuable with a fancy new stadium. The PSLs that they are requiring for every seat compel ticket owners to buy. Sure, the low end seats can eat the $1000 or whatever, but the $20,000 sections are going to have to sell for peanuts or eat the entire loss.

    Getting a new building done and turning around to sell the team is smart idea. Blame health issues. Walk away with billions more for doing almost nothing while letting new owner know to save up pennies for 15 years to break the lease.

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